


Bricklaying

by labingi



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, Substance Abuse, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 11:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labingi/pseuds/labingi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An embarrassing situation leads to a serious conversation--with a side of Lamarck (not Lamarque).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bricklaying

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Ao3, I set myself the challenge of slashing Enjolras and Grantaire. But Enjolras resisted, and I failed. Ce n'est pas possible. So this started out as a sex fic and ended up being about alcoholism instead--sorry.

Grantaire swam back into consciousness to the sound of someone breathing _in flagrante_. Must have dozed off in a brothel, he reflected, eyes still closed. Or perhaps a party. At any rate, there was a bed beneath him, and although the amorous sounds nearby were having some effect on him, for the moment, he wanted nothing more than to lie there languorously motionless.

For a minute or more he floated, until his thoughts gradually coalesced. What brothel exactly was he in, and had he passed out before sampling its offerings? He certainly remembered nothing to the contrary. 

Foggily, he opened his eyes to a room illuminated only by a thin pooling of moonlight and street lamps. In a chair in a shadowed corner sat a solitary man with his hand down his trousers. As Grantaire blinked and squinted into the darkness, the figure resolved into—Enjolras?

Grantaire started in surprise, at which Enjolras started and, bolting from his chair, turned away to the wall to arrange himself.

“Sorry,” Grantaire blurted, receiving no immediate reply. After a moment, he added, “Are these your rooms?” One room, to be a exact, with what looked like a small larder. 

Enjolras faced him. “I found you in a heap by my doorway,” he said accusingly.

Ah, yes. It was coming back. He recalled wandering into Enjolras’s street with some vague notion of apologizing for—well, being himself really.

He sat up, head swimming. “And you brought me upstairs. That was good of you.”

“It seemed preferable to my landlady beating you off with a broom.”

Grantaire chuckled. “Did it really?”

Enjolras’s face remained stony. He still stood with his back up against the wall, rigid. A silence protracted awkwardly.

“Thank you,” said Grantaire.

“You’re welcome. Are you sober enough to see yourself home?”

In reply, Grantaire found his feet, weaving a little, not badly—head aching, not badly. He was still wearing his coat, but when he groped around for his hat, he was forced to conclude he’d likely lost it in the street. While he was casting about, Enjolras grabbed a lamp and lit it quickly, as if to facilitate his exit.

Hatless, Grantaire started for the door but stopped. In restitution for a grand mutual embarrassment, shouldn’t he at least say what he'd come to say? “I wanted to apologize, for the Barrière du Maine.”

Enjolras gave him a weary look.

“I truly did go with every intention of rekindling their revolutionary furor. I just ran into some friends and fell to talking—”

“Fell to drinking.”

“That too.”

Enjolras crossed to the door. “It was no more than I expected. You’ve done me no injury, merely confirmed what I already knew.” With a small gesture he invited Grantaire to go out.

There came upon Grantaire the old, familiar coldness, a chill wind from nowhere piercing straight to his heart. He needed a drink: it was the only thing that blunted that emptiness. Did he still have that half a bottle at home, or had he dispatched it already? Quickly, he ran down the list of places he might still find a drink this time of night, all of this in the back of his head, while Enjolras stood before him, a million miles away in a universe of light.

Grantaire fought down an angry tremor; couldn't people understand that sober he was merely angry? “I went there for you, you know. Because I wanted to please you.”

“Grantaire, it’s late—”

“I love you.” The words fell like a blade. “You know that, don’t you? You know I love you.”

Enjolras looked away uncomfortably.

Grantaire burst out laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall to keep from doubling over. “It’s quite a farce, isn’t it? For as much as I love you, clearly I must love the bottle more, for when it comes down to you or the bottle, it’s plain enough what wins. Such is the hold of the demon intemperance. I was about to fall on my knees and declare that I’d do anything for you—but we both know that isn’t true, don’t we?”

“If it makes you despise yourself so much, why don’t you give it up?”

Grantaire's smile softened. “Why indeed.”

Enjolras sighed and headed for his corner chair, then seemed to think better of it and sat heavily on the bed. 

Grantaire went to the window and found the pale half moon. It must be past 2:00 in the morning. He sat on the sill, facing Enjolras. “Let me ask you something: why do you do it?”

Enjolras scowled. “Fight for the Republic?” he said after a moment.

“No. What I caught you doing.”

The scowl deepened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why do you do it? Why do you not not do it?”

Enjolras gave him a long, dark look. “Because sometimes the body demands it.”

“And what happens if you reject its demands?”

“Eventually, they quiet down.”

Not the answer he'd been looking for. “Ah, but in the meantime, it hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts so much to play a Tantalus bound only by yourself that you’d even do it with me asleep not eight feet away from you.”

Enjolras rubbed a hand over his face. He looked rumpled and in need of sleep. “Get out.” 

“I'm going. I merely wanted to explain: that is the very quality of my life--only imagine it, say, ten times worse. When the bottle calls to me, I can't refuse it. Every moment I hold my hand back from it is like standing at a yawning pit of need before which everything else falls away—even you.” He shrugged, pushed himself up off the sill, and made for the door.

“Have you tried consulting a doctor?”

“You’d be surprised at some of the things I’ve tried. Good night.” He stepped out into the stairwell.

“Stay,” came Enjolras’s voice behind him.

Grantaire’s heart stopped, but he covered it with a smile. “I must say you’re uncharacteristically indecisive this evening.” 

Enjolras came to stand before him. “You have a lecture tomorrow morning, I believe?”

“Theoretically.” 

“So spend the night here, and tomorrow I’ll walk you to your lecture.”

Grantaire laughed though he could feel a tear prick his eye. “It won’t work, Enjolras. You can keep me sober for a day, but it won’t change me.”

Enjolras gripped his shoulder, all trace of weariness banished. “You misapprehend the nature of change, Grantaire. Change is not the light on the road to Damascus. Change is an edifice built brick by brick. If you truly wish to transform yourself, let us lay a brick to start with.”

“All right,” said Grantaire because he couldn’t say no any more than a tumbled leaf could fight a river.

* * *

It took him a long time to fall asleep in that narrow bed, not two feet from the gray wall of Enjolras’s back, still in his shirt; neither had undressed. 

Grantaire ached. His head ached; his heart ached. His eyes refused to stay shut. More than once, he contemplated leaving. Perhaps at home he still had that half bottle. A few hours till morning: an eternity. Only a few hours. And in the end, he couldn't bring himself to reject this hospitality... this show of friendship that had invited him in though he was nothing but a disappointment. It was not something he'd expected from Enjolras.

It took Enjolras a long time drift off, too, to judge by the sound of his breathing. But at last he sank into the slow tides of sleep, and Grantaire listened to him, holding to his presence as if he were a buoy in a stormy ocean. This was the nearest they two had ever been—near enough to smell him: he smelled salty from a long day. Near enough to feel his heat but not to reach out and touch him, infinitely too far for that.

Confusedly, as sleep fell over him, he imagined their bodies embracing, vaguely, without out any clear physical act, in an outpouring of emotion half of flesh and half of spirit—something Orphic, made of song and loss, and pausing to rejoice in the warmth of youth before the bacchanal rending. 

And with another piece of his mind, he thought this love was not at all like drink, though sometimes it fell into that gaping hole and grew tarnished by his shame. Yet sometimes its yearning was the violin string of a soul in search of its heights, not its depths. And sometimes it was already complete—already perfected by the simple fact of its being. And exquisitely beautiful, as was the man who inspired it.

* * *

Grantaire couldn’t remember the last time he’d made one of his natural history lectures. He had a sense he’d found them dull, but this one he attended to. It was about giraffes. Apparently, they had not always boasted the long neck and legs of today, but through the exertion of their muscles in striving to reach the leaves high on trees, they had stretched themselves. And passing this slight, perhaps unobservable, acquired change down to their offspring over thousands of generations, the species evolved into its present, magnificent form. 

A stretch at a time. A brick at a time.

Grantaire didn’t for a moment believe that any great salvation awaited him. But he had to admit that he’d made it to his lecture—and sat through the whole thing too.


End file.
